Fillable PDFs are even worse – often they simply don’t work unless you download and install a special app and if they require a signature, you’ll probably still have to print it anyway. Try it – here’s a General Permission form for a school. It’s a nightmare to use even with Adobe’s PDF Reader app. You have to pinch and zoom to fill out fields, it’s a frustrating user experience and most people simply give up. PDFs just aren’t responsive.

What should you do? For your web site, Luckily, creating responsive web forms that just work naturally on mobile devices isn’t that hard. Try the same form above on any device and you’ll see that it works smoothly and “responds” to the form factor of the device. Even with the limited real estate of a smart phone screen, it is reasonably easy to use. You can sign it right there without printing. It’ll automatically render in a different language if available and your phone is set to that language. Here’s the Spanish version.